Our Manifestos

Digg has it's own group of one-percenters or lead-users that do most of the site's shovel work.
Uber-2.0-player Jason Calacanis has spotted this as he attempts to build AOL/Netscape's version of the crowd-sourced news system and is trying to draw Digg's top participants over with a $1,000 a month offer. It seems like a heavy-handed approach. Giving up big-dog status with all the egoboo that flows from that is surely worth more than $12k per year. It's a great example of how valuable the one-percenters are becoming when kick-starting new networks. It's also a good reminder for modern marketeers of the importance of getting closer to your own one-percenters but that cash isn't the only way of getting them on board. (Via Techcrunch).

The splendid folk at NMK have written up the entire day's presentations from Content 2.0 along with podcasts of every word. The panel I took part in with Hugh and Jamie Kantrowitz from MySpace is here. One comment that stayed with me from that day was Nic Roope's point that, “The real effect of networked media is that the products themselves need to change”. Johnnie and I will be taking some Open Sauce along to NMK later this year. Come along if you are interested in exploring co-creation and want to experience a very different format from the norm...

The supersonic Danah Boyd has grouped her best writing together and it's full of gems. In light of my
current interest in the motivations behind online participation I really enjoyed this : "The goal on MySpace is to look cool and receive peer validation." Meanwhile Scott Karp lays it down about the involvement of the one percenters : "The users will decide whether they will do it for love or money. I think ultimately they will do it for both. They will go where they get the best apps and the best fit with a community." It's a good summary of the growing feeling that user-generated media will need to share some commercial value with its most active participants.

In yesterday's Independent, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, asked the question, "Where do blog writers find the time? Do they never go to the theatre, read books, make love?". It's a bit of a dumb article referring to the internet as, "a coffee shop for paedophiles and violent fantasists", which makes it sound like Yasmin is hanging out on some pretty freaky websites, but the central point is interesting - why blog? After all, with millions and millions of folk spending...

One of the talks at MIT last week was by Jun Sato, a visiting scientist from Toshiba in Japan. One of
Jun's slides showed the distribution of Creative Commons licenses around the world. CC is one of those ideas that initially sounds radical and disruptive. However, the alternative copyrighting system has become very widely accepted since its launch in 2001. Download junsato.ppt.

I met up with journalist and modern marketeer Alan Mitchell this week
to discuss open source marketing and the world of distributed media. I
explained to Alan what we have learnt from the twenty or so blog reports we
have written over the last year - in which we summarise what
people are saying about a brand in a snapshot of blogworld. A
bit like looking in a mirror is how I described the service. Brands have
an idea of what they want people to think and believe. Sometimes that
is reflected in the online chatter, sometimes it's not...

I did a presentation at MIT MediaLab yesterday to a group of students and corporate sponsors. Still here and it's
great to be among an open-minded group from such a wide range of backgrounds. My presentation was about open source marketing: the slides about motivation, Maslow in a user-generated world, 'egoboo' and the one-percenters seemed to get people talking.

In the world of open source the notion of a gift economy makes sense, while the planned economy doesn't. The idea is that what you give away is what builds your reputation - and that reputation has value. So a programmer who solves a problem and then gives away the answer becomes quite influential among the people he has helped. And he becomes even more influential if that answer is something that others can build upon. It's an interesting question for brands trying to work out how to operate in the social space. The Stormhoek Guide To Wine Blogging strikes me as an example of a decent pressie to others. What can you give?

I have been asked to talk about Open Source Marketing at MIT's MediaLab in the US next week. MediaLab is one of those places that you hear a lot about - partly because it was founded by Nicholas Negroponte. It's also the home of some cutting-edge innovation in the digital space so the opportunity to see it first hand is a real treat.